


So a Girl Walks into a Bell Tower

by Anonymississippi



Series: The Chronicles of Das Sound Machine [1]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, Germany, Origin Story, music conservatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 07:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4212780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Nothing like a bit of hard work to help her forget the unconscious man with a head wound on her couch."</p><p>The first time they meet, it's under illegal and hazardous circumstances. There's head wounds and snark and talks of revenge. Pieter is disoriented and Fraulein Kommissar is bossy and just a bit paranoid. But the last thing she wants is to get kicked out of the Conservatory because of some blithering composer who can't keep his trap shut. An initiation gone wrong in a bell tower, a hospital visit, and a pretty big favor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So a Girl Walks into a Bell Tower

“What the hell?!”

_BONG!_

_BONG!!_

_BONG!!!_

Liesel clapped her hands over her ears and ducked behind a column to avoid a large, swinging, louder-than-the-din-of-battle metal instrument.

The others had said six p.m. at the bell tower of St. Kunibert, one of the twelve high churches of Cologne. The place was massive, medieval, older than Methuselah, with restored stone of a dulling grey and a reverence just rife for the mocking by the nearby music conservatory students. Many of the students were required to complete their hourly choral credits at churches like these, singing stilted, old-fashioned hymns in stilted, old-fashioned arrangements. Liesel had grown up going to churches like this.

She’d not really thought her first university experience would see her returning, even if she was sequestered away in the bell tower.

She hadn’t gotten the date wrong (she had quadruple checked the memo). The women’s student run chorale in Cologne had agreed to take her, despite the fact that she’d entered the Conservatory a year early; also despite the fact that her training was minimal, though advanced. She’d blown the judges away during the preliminary qualifying examination, and held the reputation of a musical savant (her first-place showing in Paris on the viola was making the rounds on some new-fangled American video site—MeTube, or something) so getting in good with her fellow classmates seemed a must in her tactical scheme for climbing to the top ranks of the Hochschule für Musik Köln.

However, she was not naïve; she was privy to the whisperings of tragic initiation ceremonies into the club gone awry, evil hazing rituals and extreme malcontent within the ranks. Not exactly what a seventeen-year-old vocal performance prodigy was hoping for. But the three women she’d met and auditioned with had seemed relatively approachable, perhaps even kind. And this was supposed to be her induction of sorts, some silliness in the belfry to welcome her to the—oh fuck.

_Those jealous harpies wanted to burst her eardrums._

* * *

 

Tintinnabular reverb burrowed into her ear canal like a Scandinavian winter wind burrows in the bone marrow. The ringing was _excruciating_ , and finding the exit to this place after being so turned around, searching for some nonexistent meeting spot (that she now realized was just a convoluted means to leave her stranded and stuck while bells ten times her body weight _bonged_ her brain to mush), would require an effort nothing short of Herculean.

Liesel pressed harder over her ears with her palms and stooped over as one of the colossal bells in the medieval church tower rang just above her head. She was tall for her age; so, forget bursting an eardrum. One false move in the chiming labyrinth and she would be decapitated, not deaf. She darted around another column, hands pressed absurdly to the sides of her skull.

She narrowly missed getting hip-checked by the outer lip of a bell twice her size. She felt as if she were playing dodge ball in the middle of a carillon frame, and was only slightly bitter that she’d be killed via massive glockenspiel before she’d even taken her first campanology class.

Well, more than _slightly_.

She would’ve aced that class.

Too bad her perfect pitch would be shot for the semester if she stayed up here much longer.

She rounded a corner and bumped into something big and solid, but definitely a little bit squishier than a bell. Something hard whacked her in the nose and she stumbled back blindly, but then found herself yanked against the big squishy thing. Her head was literally ringing and her nose nearly broken, little hot tears of anger and pain pooling at her eye creases. She stared upward with a practiced glare and met a sharp, boyishly animated face, mouthing words she’d not be able to decipher until after the evening vespers ringing concluded.

His hand around her waist had saved her from a sure _whack_ by one of the larger bells on the lower frames.

Liesel swatted at his arm and put her hand over his chittering gob. She shifted her head to the right and the left, eyeing routes around bells and doing her best to communicate a desire for an exit. She removed her hand and her eyes shot upwards, begging for understanding. The guy nodded once and inched around the column he’d pulled her against. His palms flew up to his own ears as he led the way around the column, ducking until they made it to the far corner of the open air belfry.

He turned to look down at her and opened his mouth to speak, at which Liesel delivered a knowing side eye, and flapped her extended elbows slightly at her head to remind the idiot that _she still had her ears covered_.

The boy didn’t get a word out, but instead shot a look between two swaying bells hung on an architecturally questionable low beam. Between the bells was a square hole in the floor that Liesel recognized as the entrance to the belfry, dammit.

 _Leave it to her on her first day at conservatory to have to pull an Indiana Jones_.

She inclined her head at the guy and nodded, indicating his body, then turned to her left and nodded, directing him to one side of the outer wall. Then she motioned to herself, and jerked her head toward the opposite wall. Then her eyes flew to the hole in the floor, and then back to her co-prisoner.

He was shaking his head violently, standing up straighter, and _damn_ … he’s too tall. Skinny as a string bean, but no way he’d make it around the side of the sloping roof without getting knocked out by a bell, or close-lined by a low hanging rafter. She could probably edge around the side if she retained any of that hard-fought agility she’d honed from years of cross-country, but even for her, it would be risky. There were more bells to avoid skirting the edges.

The sounds were deafening now, yet she knew they were barely two minutes into a ringing routine. Thirteen more minutes of torture.

The guy beside her jostled her with a bony elbow to get her attention. He removed his hands from his ears and clapped them together in front of his body, then slowly pressed them outwards, as if he were Moses parting some sea or another. Liesel looked forward and stared at two massive bells, probably the largest in the set, swinging out, then in, then out again, at the exact. Same. Time.

_Scheiße._

The guy pointed to her and swiveled his head between the death trap.

_You first._

The pressure in her head nearly unbearable, she rocked back and forth in her stance to gauge the swinging pattern. She finally took a deep breath and ran as the bells split apart, falling into a slide on her side once she neared the trap door leading down to the ladder of the bell tower. She’d ripped her jeans and probably gotten a good many splinters and regurgitated mouse skeletons stuck to her ass, but at least she was getting out.

She grabbed the rope handles and flung the trap door open, then beckoned her fellow prankee with military precision. Liesel watched as his eyes flit from her to the bells, then back to her, all the while swinging his arms in rhythm with the tune.

_Of course the guy’s musically inclined if he goes to school here, but now is not the time._

Before she could finish the mental reprimand she saw him shooting towards her, long strides too long, speed too speedy, body barreling towards her too… bodily. He tried the slide maneuver she had employed but didn’t get his massive torso flat against the floor as quickly as she had. The bell swung back into place, and the edge of the bell’s lip just narrowly clipped his head, which, thank God, could’ve been much worse.

She thought she saw him mouth a word that looked like _Fight!_ or _Fail!_ or something that rhymed with duck; it didn’t really matter what he said, because the guy had landed half in the trap door and half on top of her, groaning, with a fairly nasty head wound.

He was hot and heavy and there was a bony elbow jutting into her ribs, his head resting in the crook of her shoulder. Ringlets of his poofy curls were lodged in her mouth, up her nose, and his sneaker was dangling haphazardly into the trap door leading down to the stairwell. He didn’t seem eager to move, so Liesel touched the back of his skull with the hand that wasn’t trapped beneath his body, pulling away once she hit something warm, and slick, and yes… definitely red.

For such a skinny person he was heavier than an elephant, one that seemed especially woozy from a shit ton of tranquilizers. But the bells were still ringing, her head was still hurting, and they both needed out. She maneuvered him into something of a fireman’s carry over her shoulder, and began the precarious decent with a half-conscious, nearly grown man in her insecure hold.

The journey was tedious and tiring, and her head felt like she’d been flown up in a plane and then submerged in a submarine, all kinds of popping pressures messing with her equilibrium, affecting her hearing. She remembered the ladder being rickety and creaky on her way up; but going down, she could hear nothing, could only feel the unsavory rolling of the ladder rungs in their slots. She focused on the physical carrying, preferring not to get hung up on resentment and revenge, no matter how sweet the planning and enacting would eventually be. Instead, she gripped tighter with her aching arm, holding the man’s slim waist in the crook of her neck. She managed to get the guy upright in the stairwell, and only dropped him once. His singular protest to the manhandling was a pained groan in a full-bodied baritone; but, Liesel decided, now wasn’t exactly the time for tonal analysis.

She finally made it to the bottom of the stairwell and allowed the guy to fall to the floor in a heap. She collected herself and shook her head, pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and wished for medication to appear on command. She could definitely use an aspirin.

Liesel stooped down and grabbed the man’s hands and drug him from the tower’s stairwell-turned-closet, the bells still bonging away floors above them. There would be people congregating in the sanctuary, maybe even students from the conservatory singing with the choir; she’d have to find some way to sneak out of a heavily trafficked church with 175 pounds of dead weight. She didn’t want to give any of those girls the satisfaction of causing her further embarrassment.

Liesel dragged the body as quietly as she could through the apse, peeking around corners to avoid any stragglers who might be arriving late. Mercifully (they were escaping a church, after all) they didn’t run into anyone, and the guy seemed to be grunting back to coherency. He likewise seemed intent on staring her to death, though that might have to do with the fact she’d just somewhat pushed him down the front steps of the church. There were tiny red patches of blood dotting every other step that made her nose twitch in dissatisfaction.

_Those girls were going to pay._

“Ugh,” he coughed, sitting up on the stone steps and shaking his head, then listing to the side, then cupping the back of his neck. He drew his hand away and glanced at the blood, eyes crossing and attention waning.

“Hey,” she said, clambering down the stairs and crouching next to him. “You’re going to the infirmary.”

He shook his head and tried to brush her off, scrabbling upright onto the pavement with all the grace of a beached whale.

“You’re going,” Liesel said again. “It’s non-optional.”

“What?”

“Huh?” she asked inarticulately, but it was difficult to hear, considering how loudly those bells had been ringing.

His eyes seemed slightly unfocused, his stance weighted and movements retarded, an indolent, drunken sort of sway. He took a step away from her and started falling, but she lunged out to catch him before he could collapse and injure himself further.

“Look,” she pointed, indicating St. Marien’s hospital, a fortuitous positioning directly across the street from the church.

And behind the hospital, the university. Almost like the city planners knew the students would get up to no good on campus and injure themselves in the no-good-ness. From there, said troublemakers would cross the street to get patched up at the hospital. One more street over, a Romanesque church for confessions and penance. And if none of that worked, well, there was always the river one could fling themselves into, directly southwest of the church’s green.

A highly logical set-up, in Liesel’s opinion.

“Come,” Liesel commanded, flinging the boy’s arm over her shoulders once again.

She dragged him toward the emergency room where they were told to wait, despite the fact that the blood from the head wound was streaming pretty heavily by now. Liesel moved him toward one of the lobby chairs and pulled the hoodie of the guy’s sweatshirt up toward the back of his head, pressing gently. He flinched, but merely flopped his head forward in his hands, too disoriented to protest. She kept the pressure steady but didn’t ask him any questions.

She doubted he could answer properly, anyway.

Liesel was no doctor, but wasn’t blood supposed to clot after a little while? Pulling back the edges of the sopping hoodie, her stomach finally began roiling at the sight. Sticky, matted hair stained the heather grey cotton to black; once springy, bouncy-looking darker curls, were flattened by the blood of a viscous head wound. She didn’t even know the guy, but acknowledging that he’d been put in the same position she had, due to some… unknown reason, but a reason nonetheless, elicited a strange sense of companionship within Liesel, a resonant concern for his well-being.

Once the nursing staff took the boy into an examination room, she filled out the paperwork to the best of her abilities. This meant leaving ¾ of the page blank; she didn’t even know the guy’s name, let alone his DOB, allergies, med ID#, or the like. Hell, she couldn’t even be certain he was a student at the conservatory… but her gut told her he was. The incident report she left intentionally vague ( _he hit his head and fell_ ), and hoped the fact that she’d brought him in and signed her name to his paperwork would be reason enough for the doctors to let her see him.

Twenty minutes after he’d been whisked behind staff-access only doors, a nurse with a bit of blood on the neckline of her aqua scrubs came to retrieve her.

“Needed five stitches,” she explained, turning a sharp ninety degrees down a corridor of bustling hospital staff, gurneys, and medical trays. “No concussion, but we had to shave part of his head to get to the split and apply the sutures. He’s lost a fair bit of blood, so expect some wooziness. The nurse watching him will show you how to change the bandages until he can come back and get the stitches removed.”

Liesel didn’t speak, but nodded her understanding. She was led to an open room of exam tables, behind one of which sat bell-tower guy. His eyes gravitated from nurse to nurse to her, and then just lingered there, as if he were sizing up some competition.

“You’ll need to come back in next Wednesday, so we can remove the stitches. Here’s a mild pain reliever, and I just need your policy number so we can bill you. Your girlfriend didn’t have the card on her.”

“Oh, she’s not—”

“In charge of his medical policy, obviously. Why would I have his card?” Liesel said. Because the last thing she wanted to do was admit to not knowing the guy, and then have these nurses start asking questions, and those questions leading to blood on the church steps, blood in the bell tower, and then inevitable expulsion from the largest performance conservatory in Europe.

All because some insecure second years found her threatening.

_Pathetic._

Hopefully square jaw on the table in front of her was lucid enough to play along.

“Go on, get your card out—” she directed, as he tugged a wallet from his back pocket. His student ID was, thankfully, displayed in the clear slot at the opening of his wallet, so she could go ahead and address her supposed boyfriend, “—Pieter.”

His eyes flickered up to meet hers for a moment before he redirected his attention to his wallet. He handed over the health care card as the nurse spoke further about getting rest, lying on his side for the night, getting some juice in his system after that much blood loss. Three minutes later the pair were whisked out from behind their curtained cubicle and directed towards the main lobby exit, discharged to perform further acts of tomfoolery.

He didn’t speak until they were walking, a pointed bit of distance between them, in the twilight back to the conservatory.

“You are very bossy.”

“What?”

“You are extremely bossy. ‘Slide under the bell.’ ‘You’re going to the infirmary.’ ‘Show them your health card.’ It does not end with you.”

“I’m sorry?” Liesel questioned, holding up at the corner of the street. She pressed the crosswalk button with more force than was strictly necessary.

“You should be. My head is bleeding like the characters of one of those horror films. The screamy ones. With all the running and the chainsaws and battle axes. I am the victim of some untold terror.”

“It’s told. It’s simple. You were nearly decapitated by a church bell.”

“I will make it seem far more dramatic in the retelling.”

“Can you not cushion it for your audience? Don’t embellish it. I don’t want it coming back to bite us in the ass.”

The boy stood straighter, as if a rod had been screwed to his spine instead of bandages plastered to his head. He slapped his hands to his sides and stared off into the middle distance, then brought one bladed hand up against his brow. “Ja, Kommissar!” he practically shouted to the streetlamp.

“W-what?” Liesel stammered, but steered him into the crosswalk once the light signaled pedestrian access. “What on earth are you doing?”

“See,” Pieter said, plodding along leisurely. “You’re shoving me across the street. Bossy. Like—”

“Like a boss,” Liesel finished. “If you do as I say, we won’t get in trouble.”

“Why would we be in trouble?”

“You’re at the conservatory, ja?” Liesel asked.

Pieter halted at the edge of the sidewalk, the corner that led onto the conservatory’s campus. A strange mix of old stone buildings and newer feats of ostentatious architecture didn’t really give the place a sense of cohesiveness. It wasn’t particularly attractive, as disparate and severe as the styles were; yet Liesel didn’t want to get kicked out. Definitely not. Too bad the guy beside her had just suffered a head injury, or else she’d have knocked some serious sense into him.

“Yes,” Pieter answered. “But how did you—”

“Why else would you be in the belfry?” Liesel asked with an eye roll, walking along the main entrance to the campus proper. “Was it… was it some sort of initiation?” she chanced.

“For you as well?” the boy shrugged, shoving his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. “I was to join the men’s chorus. Though, I’ve heard they aren’t extremely fond of composition students. Though why they would send me there—”

“They are scared of you,” Liesel said. “I gather you auditioned for their group?”

“Ja.”

“Then they heard you. And were intimidated. You should consider it a compliment, them pulling this prank.”

“I should consider it a compliment?” he repeated incredulously. “Them sending me to my potential death and definite head injury? I look like a butchered poodle dog,” Pieter ran hesitant fingers over one half of his closely cropped head, pausing under a street lamp near the Student Centre. “Do you hear yourself when you speak, Frãulein Kommissar? You sound ridiculous.”

“It is not ridiculous if it is true. Besides, your hair looks more professional that way,” Liesel argued.

"The truth is often the most ridiculous," Pieter bantered.

“Look, the real matter is finding some sort of retaliation. We cannot let this slight go unanswered.”

“So hostile. I’m both terrified and intrigued,” Pieter replied, leaning against the street lamp. “What did you have in mind?”

“I… eh, I’m not sure,” Liesel admitted, toying with the tips of her nails. “I’m not even positive of the women’s names.”

“You are much bark without bite.”

“I can bite plenty hard enough!”

“Please don’t. Though tonight’s excursion might provide evidence to the contrary, I am rather fond of chunks of my skin staying in place,” he said, rattling the bottle of pain killers in his hoodie pockets. He sat on a stone bench and looked out over the quiet campus grounds, abandoned, as well it should be, for seven p.m. on a college campus, the first Friday of the semester. “I’m Pieter, by the way. Pieter Krämer. Though you already know that.”

“Liesel,” Liesel offered. “Liesel Janssen.”

“Program?”

“Singing, though I play viola and piano. I’m minoring in dance. You?”

“Nothing so showy,” Pieter responded. “Conducting, with a composition minor. I play guitar and some piano. I can dance a little, though not so well as to pursue a degree. And my singing voice is shaky at best.”

“You must sing better than you give yourself credit for, or else the chorale would not have wanted to intimidate you by sending you to the bell tower,” Liesel reasoned.

“And you are disregarding the idea that some people might just not like me? That they are mean for the sake of it?”

“You seem tolerable enough, though I don’t really know you.”

“Ouch, after all we’ve been through? Surely my girlfriend would know me better by now!” Pieter grinned, placing an affected hand over his chest. “It was the invite for Christmas holidays. I just knew it was too soon!”

“What are you on about?” Liesel asked.

“You do not kid much, do you?”

“Kid?”

“It's an American word I heard. Tease. Joke. Have a good time.”

“I ‘kid’ plenty.”

“In between your voice lessons and dance routines and reading all of your piano and viola sheet music?”

“Well,” Liesel said, biting a nail, “It’s not a bad thing to be focused if you know what you want.”

“That leaves so little time for recreation.”

“Like climbing bell towers and succumbing to head injuries.”

“I’m not going to get a laugh out of you, am I?” Pieter asked.

Liesel regarded him carefully, judging for any type of ulterior motive in his attitude. It wasn’t exactly flirtatious, and he’d kept the leering to a minimum. He was obviously good at what he did, or else he wouldn’t have been singled out for embarrassment. Perhaps he just needed someone like her to make him realize his full potential. To temper his nonsense.

“I'll have you know I laugh plenty, but after tonight, it is unlikely.”

“Very well,” Pieter said, standing. “Not that we’ve not had a pleasant evening, Liesel, but I should retire to my apartment. I don’t feel like I’ll be able to remain upright much longer.”

“What building are you in?”

“I'm on Niehler Damm.”

“Too good for student housing?” Liesel asked. "That's a very nice area."

“No. I would much rather be closer to the school.”

“For evenings like this, is that right?”

“No…” Pieter shook his head, but Liesel didn’t press. Perhaps there was a story there.

“Look, you can stay on our apartment couch. It’s closer,” Liesel said.

“I hardly know you. You could be some sort of deranged murderer. How do I know you don’t plan to do me in completely? The bell tower was the lure, and now the men’s chorus has hired some assassin who doesn’t laugh to slit my throat wide in student housing!”

“… you have an overactive imagination.”

“Danke schön,” Pieter slurred, knees buckling, likely due to his exuberant narrative retelling.

“You’re coming home with me,” Liesel said, forcibly throwing his arm around her shoulders, once again.

“Ja, Kommissar.”

“And we’re getting you set up on the couch or something.”

“Ja, Kommissar.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Nein, Kommissar.”

“I could just leave you on the green, you know.”

“I don’t think you will. You seem… like a better person than that. You don’t laugh, but… you would not have taken me to the hospital and helped if there was not some redeeming quality about you.”

“Ja, well… danke,” Liesel said, the evening’s activities wearing on her as well. She really wanted nothing more than to go home and start in on her classics assignment. Fun and laughter could be had later.

“I guess I’ll owe you one,” Pieter mumbled, nearly nodding off on her shoulder.

“Nein! Don’t you dare!” Liesel stumbled, shaking Pieter back to consciousness. “We’ve got three flights of stairs before you can do that.”

They made it to the lobby of the student housing, and it was with some difficulty that she wrestled her key from her back pocket. The stairs were an adventure in themselves, Pieter all the while cracking nonsensical jokes and yet climbing steps with the sure-footed grace of a mountain goat.

_Probably a better dancer than he thinks._

She could not tell if it was the pain killers or his personality influencing the steady stream of chatter. She hoped it was the former, but suspected the latter. After having deposited him on her not-so-comfy flat couch, she exited to the kitchen to grab a box of biscuits and some juice for Pieter, then put a pot of coffee on for herself.

Returning to the common area she found Pieter, wild mop of hair half buzzed to cropped perfection, mouth slack, and a substantial amount of masculine drool pooling on the armrest of her couch. He was emitting this deafening roar she finally classified as a snore. She sighed, then crossed to the table to set the food in place, sitting down to her sheet music and her CD player. She plugged in her headphones, and retrieved the CD she’d checked out at the library.

Nothing like a bit of hard work to help her forget the unconscious man with a head wound on her couch.

Liesel threw one last glance toward Pieter and grinned; there might have even been a chuckle there. At least she’d have a good story to tell at break, concerning her first days at university.

And a pretty big favor to cash in.

At some point.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Many Years Later_ **

“Pieter?”

“Ja?”

…

…

…

“I’d like to cash in that favor now.”

“Favor? What favor?”

“Do you remember the first night we met?”

“Honestly, I’m pretty sure I was suffering from a subdural hematoma, so—”

“You see, and I thought you’d experienced brain injury from _before_ I met you.”

“This is not the way one goes about asking for a favor, Liesel.”

“Ja, ja… I know.”

…

…

…

“Liesel?”

“I want to start a performance group.”

“We are _in_ a performance group.”

“I want to start a _better_ performance group. I need… I need a composer.”

“And you want me to do it?”

“Ja.”

“Okay, hmm…you… you realize what this would mean?”

“You do know who you’re talking to, right? I’ve accounted for every possibility.”

“Including the failures, Liesel?”

“Pieter, I’m doing this. And I know you’re trying to help with your caution, but I can already tell… you’re doing this, too.”

“Ja… ja, I am Kommissar.”

“I’m never going to shake that title, am I?”

“It is not likely.”

“Well then, I suppose we should get to work.”

“Ja.”

“Danke schön, Pieter. I could not do this without you.”

“You could… but I do not think you would want to.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because DSM certainly didn't appear from nothing. And 'kommissar' certainly wasn't that character's given name. Additionally, DSM would have been one of the forerunners of the modern a cappella movement, if a 3-time world championship and basic math is anything to go by. I was able to churn this out when I wasn't crying over a seven page syllabus, so if there's any fellow Kommieter BrOTP/OTP peeps out there looking for a read... this one's for you. Feedback always appreciated!


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